Election bets fail to shake up Oddschecker Top 10
Investment in political markets ahead of the UK general election this Thursday has failed to shake up the pecking order of the Oddschecker Top 10 UK bookmakers, the latest figures from the leading odds comparison service reveal.
INVESTMENT in political markets ahead of the UK general election this Thursday has failed to shake up the pecking order of the Oddschecker Top 10 UK bookmakers, the latest figures from the leading odds comparison service reveal.
The data from the site, which boasts more than 600,000 unique users a month, show that despite major investment in election coverage by operators including Betfair and Ladbrokes, the Oddschecker Top 10 remains the same as in March, when competitive odds on the Cheltenham Festival saw Bet365 beat Betfair to the top slot.
However the election overall has proven the third most popular fixture, with political betting evenly-spread among top bookies.
Oddschecker commercial manager Simon Miller said: “For the first 10 days of this election campaign politics betting had been as uninspiring as the parties themselves, but the TV debates changed everything.
“Since then the General Election ‘Most Seats’ market has been in the top 10 most viewed markets on Oddschecker, with over 180,000 page views. It is fair to say the majority of these are people window shopping rather than betting, but nonetheless we have seen several thousand bets, spread evenly amongst the bookmakers.”
The Oddschecker Most Seats market was beaten only by the football Premiership homepage, which had roughly 360,000 visits, and the Masters golf homepage, which had 240,000 page views.
Betfair’s investment in the UK election has included creating more 1,300 election markets and the launch of a new site, ElectionPredict.com, with political pollsters ComRes giving the most up-to-date predictions on the race. Rival Bet365, by contrast, has only six general election markets in addition to 120 constituency markets.
The Oddschecker April figures, seen exclusively by EGRmagazine.com, also include Bodog.com, which joined the Oddschecker listed operators for the first time last month and ranked 19th by month end.
April’s top 10 bookmakers on Oddschecker (% share of overall site click-throughs)
1. Bet365 (14.5%)
2. Betfair (12.9%)
3. Ladbrokes (10.2%)
4. Stan James (8.9%)
5. Paddy Power (7.7%)
6. William Hill (7.2%)
7. Victor Chandler (6.0%)
8. Sky Bet (5.4%)
9. Betfred (5.0%)
10. Coral (4.3%)